A day trip to Montreux

Lived in Montreux

"If you want your soul to find peace, go to Montreux", so says the Rough Guide. For those who don't believe in a soul, they are a little more helpful when they expand to say Montreux can also be "a snooty place, ...and not particularly exciting."  Ironically then we visited the place a week ago on Ascension day, which is Thursday a bank holiday here in Switz. Not a great day you'd think to go visiting a place that is known for not being exciting! Still, it's the place where this man lived so it can't be all that bad.   We had to stand in line to get a picture of the statue of the man. Well, we would have, if everyone else had.
At times it was quite a ruck, and the challenge was to get a shot without the girlfriend of a happy snappy Japanese tourist's head getting in the way. Really, Montreux should do themselves a favour, put in a few parking spaces with five minute stopping times close to the statue. It would really help them to cut down the crowds.  After all, the guide book says Montreux makes the rest of the country look cheap, so its not as though Freddie fans after a pic are going to be splashing the cash if they stayed for any longer than five minutes.
There wasn't much to do, except to find lunch and take a walk beside the lake. Once we'd done both those things it was basically an hour's car ride back to the other end of the lake.
But lunch was amazing, in the Palais Oriental, at one end of the town near the Chateau de Chillon. The Palais does dishes from Iran, Lebanon or Morocco and they are brilliant. The lamb was falling off the bone, tender, warm and spicy. Really, really good stuff, and probably worth the trip on its own. The decor of the place was fantastic, and the place is was vast - despite which it was still crowded. If you're going to go all the way to Montreux to eat then it looks a good idea to book.
Post lunch we walked a couple of kilometres to the Chateau de Chillon then the crowd of tourists flooding in to the chateau turned us off trying to get in. Laughingly we commented that the huge outside walls probably only hid an entrance hall, a WC and a tatty bedroom. Walking back to the town we checked the guide book and discovered that we had actually missed out on a beautiful building. I guess we'll be going back to Montreux.